European Union (Approvals) Bill

Vicky Ford Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 4th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir William Cash]

I am glad to respond, because I have been very much engaged on that subject. In fact, one of the last things I did on the day of Dissolution was to write to the Chief Whip asking him to ensure that our Committee was reconstituted immediately after the election, because in 2015 the whole process went on until November, by which time we had a monument of documents. In the meantime, many things are being decided in the European institutions, many of which are directly relevant to the Brexit negotiations. It is therefore incredibly important that this House has an opportunity to assess the sorts of things that are being decided, subject to the Committee clearing the documents.

As hon. Members may know, if the European Scrutiny Committee imposes scrutiny reserve on a document because we think it is so important that it has to be debated, the Council of Ministers cannot conclude its consideration of those matters, and the Government cannot make a decision to carry the matter through, unless and until that debate has taken place. When we have a pile of documents—I understand there are some 200 documents in the pipeline—and a pile of explanatory memoranda explaining the Government’s position on them, the position the Government adopt on the documents in the negotiations will be highly interesting.

My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole rightly raises the question of getting on with the job, and I am given to understand, without committing anybody to anything, that the Government are taking steps to accelerate the process because it is so important. Of course, we will discuss the other Select Committees later this afternoon. Their schedules and the allocation of chairmanships to each party will be decided, and I understand that that has been discussed through the usual channels, so I do not expect it to be terribly controversial, but for all the reasons I have set out, it is important for the European Scrutiny Committee to get going.

I entirely endorse what the Minister said about the Canada agreement, which again was discussed by the European Scrutiny Committee. We agreed that we would let it go ahead, but the explanatory notes on the Bill indicate some implications for United Kingdom companies operating in the EU after Brexit, which is the bit we should be most concerned about at the moment:

“Following the UK’s exit from the European Union, UK companies operating in the EU will still be subject to the jurisdiction of the European Commission in antitrust investigations and, where the thresholds are met, in merger investigations in the same way as for other non-EU companies operating in the EU. Information relating to UK companies based in the EU would therefore still be transferable under the new Agreement.”

That is becoming a bit of a hot potato. I made a representation to the Prime Minister the other day on the question of citizens’ rights, and we hear a lot about the question of City regulation, and here it is coming up again.

Some people are making too much of it. An enormous amount is emerging from the commentariat and on programmes we sometimes find ourselves listening to but that we perhaps ought to switch off. They are trying to make out that, somehow or other, the real problem is that we have to stay in the European Court of Justice, which is complete rubbish. We do not have to stay in the European Court of Justice and, far more than that, we are not going to stay in the European Court of Justice, because we will be repealing sections 2 and 3 of the European Communities Act 1972. The Labour party has made it clear that we will not stay in the single market or the customs union, which raises some of the biggest issues relating to the ECJ. Frankly, as I told the House the other day, we have to come up with a sensible arrangement that does not prejudice the regaining of our judicial sovereignty. At the same time, we must agree some form of tribunal that enables us, through a parallel bilateral “source of law” agreement, to have a decision-making process that does not and cannot keep us in the European Court of Justice. That is not a matter of opinion or of wishful thinking; staying in the ECJ is fantasy land.

[Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)]

At the moment, under our current competition agreement with the EU, a British company can seek direct redress if it believes a European company is anti-competitive. Under the agreement between the EU, the UK and Canada, although we will have competition co-operation if we pass the Bill, there will be no direct redress for a British company that is concerned about the anti-competitive activities of a Canadian company. Therefore, although I completely understand my hon. Friend’s concerns about the European Court of Justice, we want enforcement that means British companies can seek direct redress from our largest trading partner, when needed. Does he think that the European economic area or the European Free Trade Association court models might be of interest?

[Sir William Cash]

I am not at all convinced by the EEA route. I do not want to get into all that now, except to say that the EEA involves the EU.

[Vicky Ford]

The EFTA court?

[Sir William Cash]

EFTA is a different story, and I specifically raised it with the Prime Minister only a few days ago because I have been having fruitful discussions with the president of the EFTA court and his advisers. He has been over here to talk to the Foreign Office, to me as the then Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee and to others.

It is an interesting proposition. I am not saying that we will do exactly the same in resolving those jurisdictional questions as happens at the moment with EFTA, but the great advantage of the EFTA model is that it is completely independent of the EU yet follows the decisions of the European Court of Justice for the most part, although not always—that is important. I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) noticed that, because not many people have. It is important that we have a constructive discussion about the best way of being cousins rather than brothers and sisters, as I said in my earlier intervention. We all have a mutual interest in ensuring that we have a proper jurisdictional answer to these questions.

I will not attempt to design a model here and now, but it might be something along the lines of a retired European Court of Justice judge—I do not want to be held to this, but it is a thought—together with a retired member of our Supreme Court and an independent judge, so that we get the benefit of listening to arguments that bridge the two jurisdictions. We will retain our sovereignty, judicial and legislative, but we are interested, for the sake of the companies to which my hon. Friend referred, in ensuring that we give them the answers they need. Her general point raises an important practical question, and we need to ensure that we end up with something that works, without prejudicing our legislative and judicial sovereignty, while providing an answer to the people in our constituencies and throughout the United Kingdom whom we serve as Members of Parliament.

Mr Deputy Speaker, many congratulations to you on the fact that I am seeing you here yet again. As you may have noticed, I am still here as well. So for practical purposes, let me draw my speech to a conclusion by saying that I do not in any way want to interfere with the process before us, because it is not going to affect this country in the longer term, and it is important that we act sensibly and responsibly to make sure that we do not rock the boat in the meantime.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

I call Vicky Ford.

[Vicky Ford]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Just a sec. It is worth reminding Members to get into the habit of standing up to catch my eye, so I know who wants to speak, especially as the list of Members wishing to speak is changing quicker than I have ever seen a list change before.

[Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)]

Thank you for calling me, Mr Deputy Speaker. As someone who believes in open, competitive and free markets because they foster innovation, generate prosperity and create the wealth that we need for our public services, I believe we must have robust competition powers so that we can take action against companies that act in an anti-competitive manner. In the 21st-century world, the economic actors are frequently global players, especially in areas such as digital markets. It is important that we can work with other countries on competition issues.

A couple of years ago, I was in Silicon Valley with politicians from Germany, the Netherlands, Poland and the Czech Republic. Many players in Silicon Valley told us their concerns about how Google was acting. I went with that group of politicians to meet the head of search at Google, and I have never seen a company with so many lawyers in one room. They knew the power that countries could have when acting together. It was therefore interesting to see the European Commissioner for Competition taking action, a couple of weeks ago, on a proposed fine for Google. That case has caused some controversy, and it may create precedents for how platforms can act in future.

It is important in such cases that those who are taking the action make it clear that there is a level playing field, and that they are not singling out, for example, an American company when they would not do the same to a British or European one. One benefit of a co-operation deal, such as the one that we are discussing today, is that by working together we can help to reinforce the level playing field and the idea that we would not single out our own companies for a different type of enforcement. It removes what we call the jurisdiction bias risk. It also brings bigger resources to take on big cases, and post-Brexit the UK will want to make it clear to the world that we are prepared to take on competition cases for big players. The ability to continue to co-operate with other countries is therefore important.

Canada is a dear friend to the UK, as my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) pointed out, but the Canada free trade agreement is not the perfect model for the future UK-EU relationship. That agreement removes many, many tariffs from different trades. We voted it through in the European Parliament on 15 February, the day after Valentine’s day, and I remember celebrating, as we would have tariff-free chocolate—a great benefit. However, it does not create the deep level of market access that the Government seek in our future relationship with Europe. If we chose that model off the shelf, it would create many new non-tariff barriers in areas such as digital and financial services. It would not provide the regulatory co-operation model that we seek. For example, British car manufacturers would not even be consulted in a stakeholder consultation about changes to international rules on car transactions.

We therefore need a deeper model, and we need to make sure that co-operation on competition has a dispute resolution mechanism for companies as well as countries. I was particularly pleased to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) suggest that the European Free Trade Association courts might prove to be a good or interesting basis for dispute resolution. He was sending a powerful message, given all his experience, that that might be a pragmatic solution.

Finally, picking up the suggestion from my hon. Friend that we need to move on from being brothers and sisters to become close cousins, in developing that relationship there will be things about which we will need to have serious discussions and arguments. I would suggest that this is not one of them. Allowing other countries to come together on issues such as human rights and competition co-operation is something that we should allow to pass and not block. We should save our discussions and arguments for when they are really needed.